Crossroads

Joel stood there at the crossroads and thought to himself as he watched the sun's rays wafting through the trees that were growing on that one side of the road. It was not of his choice to be here, but there was just something he had to be sure of, something that he needed to confirm.

Before her death, his grandmother had summoned him to her and said to him. ``Joel, reach into that drawer over there next to my bed.'' He followed her orders and opened up the drawer of the dresser. There was a leather bound book in there. The cover was old and worn, showing its age very clearly, but other than that, it was surprisingly well kept. ``Pick up that book, Joel.''

``Yes grandma,'' he had said and picked the book up and handed it to her. His grandmother touched the cover, and he could almost see her eyes glowing somewhat lovingly for a fleeting moment before returning to its quiet demeanour. ``Take this diary of your grandfather's and read up on what we had gone through. You may wish to travel to some of the places mentioned to check on the things that he had written. I was there when it all happened, but I never saw the need to revisit old haunts. Perhaps you might find it an interesting exercise in discovering your heritage.''

That happened around two months ago.

Joel had read the diary. It was a well-kept journal chronicling the times of the second World War. His grandfather was one of the British infantrymen who was part of the defense of Malaya against the Japanese, while his grandmother was one of the local girls who ended up marrying to his British-born grandfather. The diary was written in a clean cursive that was characteristic of that era, small and clean. Paper was hard to come by, and leather bound paper was an even rarer luxury.

There were a coupld of rather disturbing yet interesting things that were written in the journal. The moment he saw them, Joel knew what his grandmother meant when she suggested that he might be interested in taking a little travel here and there to check up on the locations that were talked about.

He had spent the last two months travelling all over modern peninsular Malaysia, the scion of the old Malaya that was torn asunder by the atrocities that was the Japanese occupation. And in each of the five or so places that he had gone, he managed to correlate what he saw with what was written.

And now, he was at the final location hinted in the journal. A crossroad of two rather ancient paths that criss-crossed the peninsula.

Buried beneath one corner was supposedly the body of a man that his grandfather had to kill in order to survive.

Buried beneath the opposite corner was supposedly a cache of valuables that his grandparents had before the war came and made it all impossible to move on.

He stood at the crossroads and carried on thinking.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 04-Jan-2014 21:00:06)